Jody McAuliffe

When: Wed., April 10, 7 p.m. 2013

Decades before Jody McAuliffe became a renowned regional theater artist at Duke and Manbites Dog Theater, she lived a harrowing first-person drama without the benefits of any rehearsal, script or director. In her new book, The Mythical Bill, A Neurological Memoir, McAuliffe assembles research, evidence and personal narrative from that period in pursuit of a medical—and human—mystery: What caused her father to develop spasmodic torticollis, a painful condition in which the neck involuntarily twists and gyrates the head? How did it relate to his mental instability and deterioration? Was it really a physical metaphor for his psychological condition? And how much sense can ultimately be made of the things that shape—and, at times, contort—our bodies and our lives? —Byron Woods